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Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America
Laura Browder
University of North Carolina Press
February 2008
On Sale: February 7, 2008
304 pages ISBN: 0807858897 EAN: 9780807858899 Paperback
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Women's Fiction Historical
The gun-toting woman holds enormous symbolic significance in
American culture. For over two centuries, women who pick up
guns have interrupted the popular association of guns and
masculinity, spurring debates about women's capabilities for
violence as well as their capacity for full citizenship. In
Her Best Shot, Laura Browder examines the relationship
between women and guns and the ways in which the figure of
the armed woman has served as a lightning rod for cultural
issues from the American Revolution to the present. Utilizing autobiographies, advertising, journalism, novels,
and political tracts, among other sources, Browder traces
appearances of the armed woman across an ideological
spectrum ranging from the Black Panthers to militant
right-wing militias. Among the colorful characters presented
here are Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to
fight in the American Revolution; Pauline Cushman, who posed
as a Confederate to spy for Union forces during the Civil
War; Wild West sure-shot Annie Oakley; African explorer Osa
Johnson; 1930s gangsters Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker; and
Patty Hearst, the
hostage-turned-revolutionary-turned-victim. With her
entertaining and provocative analysis, Browder demonstrates
that armed women both challenge and reinforce the easy
equation that links guns, manhood, and American identity.
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